In more not-1100 news (sorry), I've been trying carpet dying for the first time. I've never had a decent complete carpet in my Princess and the black one that's in now is at odds with the near perfect seats and door cards. Chanced upon a Paprika carpet via the (Princess) club that was quite cheap, in reasonable condition but very, very faded and dirty from nearly 40 years of use.

Two coats of dye and some drying time later and the larger portion of carpet almost looks like new. I say almost because it's clearly not a brand new carpet when you see and smell it in person. That said it still looks far better than its age might suggest and that's even under the harshness of a camera flash because my camera won't actually focus on it now it's a uniform colour.

I'm using a product called Simply Spray which I've never used before. Trying to find a UK supplier of a carpet dye that isn't black and will supply in smaller quantities proved surprisingly difficult. This stuff is an American product, and smells like old-fashioned felt tip pens which I quite like, bit of nostalgia there. You can get it on eBay or through the shop here: https://www.fabricspray.co.uk/ I've bought three large cans which looks like it should be enough to give the whole carpet set three coats. You'd probably only need 2 for an ADO16 since its carpets are considerably less than the nearly 4 square meters in the Princess.

A much, much cheaper alternative to brand new carpetting, easy to do at home and with reasonable results if you want to smarten up a car. Probably not ideal for a nut and bolt restoration. It eliminates sun-fade extremely well, especially so when you consider that orange is not a forgiving colour with dyes and paints normally.

The Princess has also had the indicator/trying to catch fire problem eliminated by removing the self-cancelling components of the indicator stalk. This is an accidental fix as Mike and I couldn't get the components to go back in without springs pinging off left right and centre and I don't really need the indicators to self cancel as I'm in the habit of doing it manually (much to the annoyance of my driving instructor whose car had those daft soft-touch indicators you could only cancel by turning the wheel). Suspension pipe has also been fixed and partially fitted, I'm just waiting for a day when it's not throwing it down and I don't have a cold so I can finish tightening up the connectors and get some fluid back in it. Then she'll be back on the road again, all being well, and I can move on to the next phase of cosmetic work, of which the new orange carpet is a part.

Got it out in daylight today before putting two coats on the front half carpet. I've still got a can left so when the unit is free I'll get a third coat on all the pieces, focusing on the areas that need it most. It now looks like an original well cared for carpet rather than a new one, which is ideal for this car. There is some wear and some staining that I couldn't do anything about, which is why the dye doesn't look completely uniform. Those areas are mostly hidden when the carpet is fitted so it's not a problem for me, this isn't a nut and bolt restoration job. Worth knowing there is a product out there that can rejuvenate tired coloured carpets and for very little outlay.

Carpet is all finished. I'm going to do a how-to on that at some point soon so everyone can see what I've done and how in an easier posting than the sporadic updates I've made.

Odd problem time on the 1100. When the Churchill pump was fixed, Mike gave it a test run on the 1100. Or rather, he attempted to. He only tried one schrader valve and then didn't try the other before quizzing me and I'm equally perplexed. The suspension on the 1100 is quite good but the schrader valve won't release any fluid. You push the pin in and only get a dribble out which is at complete odds with how healthy and presumably pressurised the system is.

All I can think is the valve is stuck or perhaps not working somehow. There's no leaks, the suspension hasn't dropped and it behaves exactly as you'd expect of a healthy system. I haven't looked at it in person as I've not had opportunity to do so, it might be that I have a look, press the pin and it works. Is this a problem anyone else has encountered?

I discovered the problem today as I happened to be at the unit for a few minutes sorting out some post. I may be the only person to encounter this issue and it's a really weird one. Please excuse the quality of the pictures, I only had my ancient phone-camera on me and it doesn't really understand macro. First, here's the good side which, I can confirm, works well and has decent pressure.20171017-02 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

When I removed the cap from the other side it was full of fluid and the valve was slowly dripping. Gave it a prod with a screwdriver and a rag and that didn't really change. Then I noticed there was something inside the valve, which was a bit odd. A little bit of a dig and I was greeted with a facefull of fluid. So it DOES work! I couldn't really see what was going on so got the camera in to look for me.20171017-01 by Angyl Roper, on Flickr

It's full of what looks like fibreglass resin. Why? Why would you do this? Did the valve fail and this was the solution? I don't understand this at all. There's pressure in the system and I can at least get it to release if I have a dig at the pinkish stuff in the valve. I got it to stop leaking as best I could and put the cap back on for now because I haven't any fluid to pump this back up at the moment (cheers Princess). When I've got some fluid I'll remove this valve and replace it with one of my spares before pumping things up again.

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